According to official figures from the state broadcaster, an average of 619,000 viewers and a 41% share of the Irish audience switched on the hour-long show.

Written by Colin Teevan and starring Love/Hate trio Charlie Murphy, Brian Gleeson and Ruth Bradley, alongside Penny Dreadful’s Sarah Greene, the new series has a lot to live up to not just among critics, but from a historical perspective as well.

Rebellion burst onto our screens last week (Image: RTE 1)

But if you missed out on last week's episode, or need a quick recap before tonight's part two:

Rebellion is RTE's most expensive drama ever

The National Broadcaster spared no expense on Rebellion, with the budget believed to be around the €6 million mark.

By comparison, Love/Hate cost around €3.6m a series, while the station coughed up €4m for last year’s Charlie Haughey drama.

Period dramas are notoriously more expensive to produce however, and RTE is confident of recouping some of the cost by selling to foreign markets.

It's not about Dev and Michael Collins

Although real-life characters from the time, including Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and Eamon deValera will appear, Rebellion uses fictional figures to bring the story to life.

Our protagonists find themselves working a variety of jobs, each deeply affected by the huge historical changes taking place around them.

Instead of revolutionaries we see Irishmen sent to serve in the British army, radicalised school teachers and suffragettes.

It's helmed by a Finnish director

Aku Louhimies won’t be a name familiar to many Irish people, though he is well regarded in his home country.

It might seem an odd move to place a non-Irish person in charge of a drama depicting one of the most significant events in our history, but there is method to the madness.

Freed from any abiding sense of loyalty to a particular version of events, Louhimies presents our history as it was, not through rose-tinted glasses.

There's a focus on strong women

RTE’s Head of Drama Jane Grogan said the programme makers “never discussed” gender balance, but Rebellion features far more leading women than your average series.

Charlie Murphy, Ruth Bradley and Sarah Greene have all been given prominent roles, and have commented on how they were too good to turn down.

Speaking about her role as Frances, Ruth said: “It is kind of so rare as an actress that you’re not somebody’s girlfriend or falling in love. I loved that her story was about her and about what she wanted.”

The actors are feeling the weight of responsibility

Rebellion isn’t just the story of our history, but of our country and where this path has led us. Expectations are high, and not everyone will be satisfied with how the events are depicted.

Charlie Murphy commented: “Although the series is largely fictional, I felt there was a weight of responsibility as an Irish person to not do a disservice to the people who lived through this important part of our history.

“It was a privilege to be given the opportunity to depict this time that shaped our nation.”

Things got spooky on set

Filming in locations such as the GPO and Kilmainham, where the very events took place, brought a sense of realness that gave the actors chills.

Producer Catherine Magee recalled: “It was some of the smaller scenes actually that I found to be the standout moments.

“One of them for me was being in Kilmainham Gaol, where we filmed on the real corridor where the female prisoners were held.

“We filmed a shot with our female prisoners being marched along that corridor. And we filmed it at night. It was very moving and the actors were very conscious of their surroundings. You could feel the ghosts of the place.”

Filming on location has its drawbacks

(Image: RTE)

The biggest day of shooting for Rebellion came outside the GPO, at 3am on a Sunday morning.

With O’Connell closed off for the occasion by Dublin City Council, and over a hundred extras and horses and carriages lining the street, the heavens opened.

Catherine said: “I’d never seen rain like it, the crowd barriers were washed away in the flood.

“And it just makes you want to cry on days like that because it makes everything slower and more difficult but that’s what happens when you film on location.

“And the awful thing is that it didn’t rain in 1916 at Easter. They had a heatwave!”

Some of the stars weren’t overly keen on the costumes

(Image: Patrick Redmond RTE 2015)

Everybody loves dressing up, but not when your outfit deprives you of oxygen.

Ruth Bradley had heard the tales, but wasn’t prepared for how difficult wearing a corset would be.

She said: “I can’t understand why they ever made them! I can only imagine it was to stop women from breathing or from having too many big ideas, because you literally can’t breathe.

“Firearms, all that stuff is good but being strung up in a corset is literally hell on earth!”